The article shows that in modern conditions, methods of comparative economic efficiency are traditionally used to estimate economic efficiency of robot implementation, with a set of factors limited by the workplace or working site. Herein, actual state of things in industrial settings and new factors that have arisen in the economy of the 21st century are not taken into consideration, which does not allow to conduct impartial assessment of the effectiveness of robot implementation within the enterprise and on the national level. We have come to the conclusion that it is necessary to expand the set of factors taken into account, to refine the cost and result accounting, don't limit ourselves only to tactical interests and boundaries of production sites. The article considers the classification of factors determining the economic efficiency of welding robot implementation. The strategic factors of the macroenvironment are identified, they emerge due to digitalization of the economy and the implementation of Industry 4.0. The most important of them include: growth in the cost of manual labor; cost reduction of robots themselves; shortened production cycle and production flexibility; increase in network technologies, cost reduction and standartization of many processes: programming, data exchange protocols, design programs, etc., standards and requirements; decline in interest in mechanical professions (manual labor) by young people.